Edgar Allan Pooh . . . before there was a cat in the hat . . . before Horton heard a Who or the Grinch stole their Christmas, Dr. Seuss . . . was busy defeating Hitler! While many Millennials believe that Hitler is a character from AMER!CAN PIE, he actually was a Grimm Fairy Tale type who stuffed everyone in ovens if they lacked traditional Aryan names such as "Hansel" or "Gretl" (who should buy a vowel!). Spelling was no laughing matter in the 1940s, as the Nazi Enigma Code was broken because they ended every message with a "Heil Hitler," which is an Anagram for "Hire the ill"! hardly a winning formula. When Dr. Seuss pictures Pvt. Snafu in SPIES staring at a Snatch Magazine at a newsstand, the physician realizes that this individual has a sick mind. So he rewires Snafu's brain to attract all of the Nazi armament to himself, as Thomas Pynchon later recounted in HIS children's story, GRAVITY'S RAINBOW. Does this mean that Slothrop is plagiarizing Snafu? Can Mrs. Trump the Third change her spots?

Michael_Elliott Spies (1943) ** 1/2 (out of 4)The third film in the War Department's attempt to teach soldiers certainly lessons. Sprivate Snafu is trained on what one shouldn't do because you never know where spies might be listening. As with the first two films, this clocks in under four minutes so there's certainly no major plot or character development. The only thing you really need to know is that the Snafu character was an idiot who constantly did the wrong thing. This includes giving small hints that someone could put together to find out important information. The War Department must have known a dunk soldier is the worst thing as that's the main focus here. Overall there's certainly nothing great or awful about this picture. It's certainly entertaining but at the same time it doesn't have anything special that makes it a classic. It's certainly interesting since it was an education tool during WWII.

ccthemovieman-1 This was my first look at a "Private Snafu" cartoon. All I know is I first see some nerdy- looking private walking around the Army camp and saying in rhyme, "I just a learned a secret; it's a honey, it's a pip, but the enemy is listening so I won't let it slip."After that I thought this was going to be very corny and stupid, but it was anything but. Afterward, when I saw Theodore Geisel, a.k.a. "Dr. Seuss" wrote it and Mel Blanc did the voicing, I wasn't surprised it was entertaining.Spies are everywhere, following Pvt. Snafu, even to the telephone in the town drugstore where our hero goes to call him mom. The German and Japanese stereotypes were typical of the day, so anyone who is offended watching today should not be. The Allies were not exactly fond of Germans and Japanese in 1943!It wasn't just verses that were clever. If you look close, you see some quick sight gags like two moose heads on the wall crossing antlers making the Nazi insignia. There's also a good message about how liquor loosens up our "zipped" lips. The main message was for everyone watching this in the theaters during a very tense time in the world's history: be careful what you say, that one careless word could leave to many people getting killed.This was a "From The Vaults" feature on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume Three.

Robert Reynolds For several of the shorts in this series, Theodore Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss) scripted and the speech patterns here reflect his quite familiar cadence. It's great! Private Snafu really screws up royally here, which was the point, as the series was meant to show soldiers what not to do and what the consequences could be. These are not balanced and fair cartoons-there was a war on at the time and Germany and Japan were the ENEMY, so the caricatures are not nice. If you are easily offended, you likely won't like these. The series is great and well worth watching. Recommended.